Cathy’s Corner: Super Bowl Stun’-day

For the past three years I have ‘celebrated’ Super Bowl Sunday by going over to a friend’s house. It is always a good time; fine food, conversation and fun.

Cathy Finn

For the past three years I have ‘celebrated’ Super Bowl Sunday by going over to a friend’s house. It is always a good time; fine food, conversation and fun.

The occasion is casual; all ages are welcome, everyone brings food. It’s casual enough that if there isn’t enough space on the sofa or chairs, the remaining folks just plop down on the floor to watch the game.

Well, I use the term ‘watch the game’ loosely. The real star of the evening tends to be the long counter in the kitchen, which is generously arrayed with pizza, wings, various dips and salads. No one is without a full plate in their hands during at least one quarter of the game, and the luckier guests manage to have a laden plate until the third quarter winds down; after that, any further eating could be considered gluttony, and thus tasteless to the extreme.

People wander, chat, catch up with everyone’s family and comment on how slowly the winter has gone. Occasionally someone will sit down to watch a few minutes of the game, and more often, folks will settle down to critique the commercials, and of course everyone gathers for the halftime show.

As soon as is socially graceful, shortly after half time, a simple majority of the revelers wander off home, to either watch the end of the game in the comfort of their PJs or to toddle off to bed, whichever seems fit.

It never occurred to me that in the Year of the Patriots, things would be any different. But they were. I knew the moment I walked through the door.

Neither my escort nor I are Bible thumping football fans, but I had convinced him to go to the party by stressing the fact that this would be, before all, a social event. New people to meet, great food to eat, and the alleged highlight of the day, the football game, would simply be a gentle murmur in the background. No more of an intrusion than the soft sound of waves as one strolls along the beach.

This year I was proven wrong.

Normally, just to get into the kitchen means a tortuous route from small clique to small clique, meeting and greeting, wending one’s way through the throng to the food. It can’t be a direct route, because one is stopped and hugged, greeted by old friends and introduced to new ones. When one reaches the counter, it is a matter of wedging oneself between the fans of the buffet to scope out the assortment of foodstuffs.

In 2012 I walked right into the kitchen and placed my food offering on the table. The hostess was in the room, rearranging the plates of food. She was by herself. She looked lonely.

I glanced through to the next room. There were throngs of people, for the moment staring stone silent at the television screen, nearly all intently leaning forward, eyes glazed over, fists clenched.

As I stood in the entryway, something happened on the football field and the gang in the room shrieked, groaned and moaned, and then started talking about the pros and cons of the play and the wisdom, or lack thereof, of the referee.

If you had dropped me down on Mars I couldn’t have been more confused.

Here they were, people I loved and had been with on Super Bowl Sunday for lo, these many years, and all of a sudden they had turned from my friends and like-thinkers into rabid football and Patriots fans. It was almost more that I could stand, and certainly more than I could understand.

We had had an unspoken, unwritten agreement. We came to the Super Bowl party to have fun. Rooting for a team, following the game wasn’t fun, it was serious business. Rooting for the Patriots meant that you actually had to watch games during the season, had to follow the statistics, had to actually know who the players were. You perhaps even had to (gasp) listen to sports talk radio.

All of a sudden, these people I thought I knew were talking about what they thought Belichick’s next move would be, how Brady managed to avoid the sack, and how Wes Welker wasn‘t worth the paper his salary was printed on. They were talking about what the linebackers were doing and the effectiveness of the quarterback sneak.

The people with whom I had, last year, discussed the quality of the spinach dip were now holding their heads and screaming with football frustration, no buffet plate in sight. They were using the pause from the game provided by the ads to discuss strategy, not the ad’s laugh quotient. Heck, they weren’t even looking at the television during the ads. At one point, I turned to a friend to discuss the laugh merits of an ad with her, and found her emphatically mapping out the previous play we had seen.

I missed what we had shared last year, splitting our sides at the Doritos commercial. In 2012 it was not the same.

I suppose it had to happen. The Patriots have gone to the Super Bowl five times since 2002. At first, even with all that success, only dyed-in-the-wool football fans were really into the team.

But after 10 years of mostly successful seasons, the trickle-down theory has taken over. The fan base has grown from sweaty guys lounging in a man-cave to grandmas discussing man-to-man coverage with the grandkids. My friends are barely recognizable anymore. They see the world on a whole different level. They are Sports Fans, and more absorbing that that, they are Patriots Fans.

I still love them all; I just love them in a different way.

I’ll guess I’ll have to brush up on my football knowledge and lore for next year. As all my friends were quick to tell me as we dragged our poor, depressed bodies out of the house at the end of the Patriots’ losing effort, “Don’t worry, we’ll be back again next year.”

Hand me that ‘Dummies Guide to Football’ book, please. I want to be part of the in crowd next year.